MADNESS FALLS LIKE RAIN
Due to the lovely Caramelchan reading the Birthdays series and leaving me lovely reviews, I decided to start it up again. So here's another update, would be lovely for you to read the other five parts, but you don't need to, all you need to know is Nikki and Harry are in an established relationship, living together, and Nikki's just found out she's pregnant.
I started this after series 13, so so much that happened on the show hasn't happened. Leo and Janet are still alive/together/happy and have a son named Jack, to which Harry and Nikki are the godparents.
Disclaimer: Still don't own it! Thinking it's probably unlikely that I ever will.
Literally NO spoilers. This series was started pre-Bloodlines, pre-Death Has No Dominion, pre-Change, before Greater Love.
You're approaching five months and in the emotional, hormonal stage when he tells you. You don't think you would have had the capacity to handle it in any situation, but your state right now – you've got no hope.
He sits you down, Leo, like he's a doctor about to tell you you're really sick, and you really start worrying when he puts a cup of tea on the desk in front of you.
"We've been thinking about it for a long time, Nikki, it wasn't an easy decision to make…"
He doesn't seem like he can quite bring himself to tell you whatever he's trying to tell you. You frown slightly.
"Janet's looked into a lot of good job opportunities for her out there when Jack starts school, and this really isn't an opportunity I'm likely to get again, not at my age…"
The words out there hang heavy, but you just listen.
"I've been offered a leading professor position in a centre that both works with the police and trains new and aspiring criminal pathologists, from eager medical students to coroners fancying spicing up their day job… It's a much bigger institution than the Lyell, and anyway, it's about time you or Harry took the professorship…"
Your voice sounds stronger than you feel, but your hand's shaking slightly around the mug. "Leo, what aren't you telling me?"
"It's in Sydney."
Everything comes crashing down, because everything's been as it is with this job, and these colleagues and friends (your developing relationship with Harry aside), for such a long time, you've started to feel some stability.
When you get home, you get Harry to sit down and make him a cup of tea, in something of a twisted mirror image. (You'd asked Leo to let you tell Harry. You don't think Leo had ever understood quite how much of a surrogate brother/father/best friend he was to your other half.) You hadn't pre-empted the panic that flashes across his face though.
"Are you ok, Nikki? Is the baby ok?"
You sigh, and manage a tiny smile. "We're fine. It's… I… Leo's…" you had had a thousand plans for breaking the news gently, but when it comes to it, you suppose it's near enough impossible. "Leo's taken a job in Sydney, Harry. He leaves the Lyell next month, and the country two weeks later…"
He doesn't say much else that night, excuses himself early and when you go up to bed after finishing you latest case report, he's already asleep. You tuck yourself into him, regardless, and his arms tighten around you slightly just as you drift off.
He's gone when you wake up, he'd been on call that night, and you don't see him much the following day, he's working on a multiple murder, and you've got seemingly endless paperwork to finish. You're the only two people left in the Lyell centre, you thought he was still down in the cutting room, when you finish for the day and shut your computer down.
"We should get married." A voice sounds from the doorway. Shocked, confused and wondering if you're dreaming, you spin around.
Harry gives you a slightly apologetic smile, shrugging. "I'm sorry, that wasn't the right way to ask you, at all…"
You laugh slightly. "Harry, I don't think you've even asked me anything!"
He chuckles. "Sorry… Nikki, will you marry me?"
Exasperated, you take a step towards him. "Where has this suddenly come from? I-"
He frowns a little before smiling again, placing his hands just below your shoulders. "You're not turning me down, are you? Because baby Cunningham there says you're in it for the long haul, and I-"
You shake your head slightly, smiling and pressing your forehead against his. "Yes, of course yes, you daft man… but it was pretty sudden, Harry… where did it come from?"
"I guess I figured one day, when I asked you, Leo'd be walking you down the aisle… I figured you probably wouldn't even invite you father-" you scowl, confirming his suspicions, "-and I guess I decided we should get on with it, before Leo goes down under, and-"
Laughing, you press your lips against his, briefly. "That is decidedly the most unromantic proposal anyone has ever made…"
There's a glint in his eyes. "But I'm your unromantic proposer, and you wouldn't have it any other way… and anyway, baby Cunningham would like Mummy and Daddy to be married, he tells me…"
You raise an eyebrow. "He?"
"I have a feeling…"
You rest you forehead against his cheek, the sudden enormity of the whole thing catching up with you.
Baby Cunningham kicks lightly, and you smile.
You hadn't expected Leo's reaction when you asked him, but you suppose if you'd thought about it, it made sense. He'd spent 13 years of Cassie's life thinking he'd be walking someone down the aisle one day, to have it cruelly stripped from him, that possibility obliterated. You hadn't accounted for the filling eyes, Leo pulling you into a hug, but you suppose it all made sense.
"You've been more a father to me that my father ever was." You breathe against his shoulder, and you're sure you feel his shoulders shake slightly.
You set the date for only a week before Leo, Janet and Jack leave the country, in the end, and you're married in the same church Harry's parents married in. It's all a little backwards, Leo both walks you down the aisle, eyes sparkling slightly, and takes his place beside Harry as his best man at the altar. But everything between the two of you has always been a little backwards, and when you dance with your new husband with all seven months of baby Cunningham bump between you, it's perfect, and it doesn't matter that it's backwards.
When Leo catches your hand when it would come the time to dance with your father, you feel a lump rising in your throat, and you grip his hand tightly.
"I'm going to miss you." You breathe, tears in your eyes matching those in his.
He shakes his head, laughing slightly. "No you're not. It's like children without their parents, the Lyell's going to fall into disrepair with you and Harry behind the wheel…"
You chuckle. "Just Harry for a while, soon. Baby Cunningham will be here before we know it, and I don't think either he or Harry will let me out of the house…"
"He?"
You roll your eyes. "It's a 'feeling' Harry has… I don't think either of them are planning on letting me go back to work for a long time…"
Leo smiles, knowingly. "You won't want to, not when you meet Baby Cunningham. Everything changes when you first see them, Nikki. You'll feel something you never knew you could…"
He looks wistfully at Janet and little Jack for a moment, and you can almost see Cassie dancing behind his eyes. You squeeze his hand, almost imperceptibly, and he gives you a little smile.
You only honeymoon for a long weekend in Paris, in a beautiful little riverside hotel with a glass ceiling, because you want to be back to see Leo off. You stand with your hand in Harry's at the airport, gritting your teeth, but when it comes to it you wrap your arms around Leo, burying your head in his shoulder, the baby Cunningham bump making it an awkward angle, but allowing him to put his arms around you all the same.
"I don't think you realise how much we're going to miss you."
"Nonsense." Leo laughs, his voice slightly thick, "You'll have a whale of a time, you'll get up to everything I never let you. You won't even notice I'm gone when the little one turns up…"
You frown, petulantly. "Call, ok? Let us know you've landed safely, let us know you've settled in…"
"Of course." He smiles. You step over to hug Janet and Jack, overhearing for a second Leo making Harry promise to ring with the news as soon as baby Cunningham's born, no matter what time it is in either country.
And then they're walking through security gates, and around the corner, and suddenly you feel just like the girl whose mother died and left her alone, heading for a country with a father she hardly knew, all over again. Tears start running down your cheeks, and the sudden choking sob rises in your throat. Everything changes, now.
Harry reaches out and takes your hand.
Hope you enjoyed! I've tried to draw some parallels both with Leo's death and how important he was to Nikki, and (in something of a different way) the concept of a colleague leaving for a distant position. And I'm a sucker for writing a H/N wedding, I don't need much of an excuse! Please leave me a little review, however short!
Hushedgreylily